Automatic colour coding of your outlook 2007/2010 calendar

To manually colour a calendar entry, set the category for an existing appointment by right-click the appointment, click Categorize (you can also click the Categorize toolbar button or choose Edit, Categorize), and then click the category.

If you use similar words for appointments like meeting in all meeting request then you can use automatic formatting in Outlook 2007 to apply a colour to an appointment based on one or more keywords in the appointment subject or notes field (or both).

For example, you can set up Outlook to automatically apply a purple background to appointments that include the time-sheet labels i.e. TS5 TS6 TS7 TS8 in the subject.

Follow these steps to set up a rule that applies automatic colour-coding:

• Click on calendar
• Choose View, View settings, Conditional Formatting. Outlook opens the Conditional Formatting dialogue box.
• Click Add. Outlook creates a new, empty rule.
• Type a Name for the new rule.

• Use the Colour list to click the colour you want to apply to appointments that satisfy the new rule’s conditions. Use our company purple colour to mark time-sheets entered.
• Click Condition. Outlook opens the Filter dialogue box (see Figure 1).
• Use the Filter dialogue box to set up the condition or conditions under which Outlook applies your automatic formatting rule.
• In the search for the word(s) field enter TS1, TS2, TS3, TS4, TS5, TS6, TS7, TS8, TS9. For the In field choose the in subject field only

• Also add a RED category for subjects that don’t contain “TS1 > 9